An Invisible Spirit

The central essay explores how stop motion makes ordinary materials seem alive while keeping their physical reality visible. It focuses on Czech animator Hermína Týrlová and her 1965 short The Blue Apron, in which a cloth apron and paper bird take flight through collage landscapes and confront threatening industrial smoke. Týrlová animated objects through movement rather than adding faces or conventional puppet features, inviting viewers to see familiar things differently. Though the film has modernist imagery and an experimental score, it was made for young children: danger and loss give way to the apron’s self-sacrifice, as it merges with the sky to repair a crack and save Earth. The essay connects this mix of wonder and threat to Týrlová’s wider work and life, including her experience of wartime Czechoslovakia, arguing that stop motion can unsettle an adult’s “jaded” view of everyday objects.

The newsletter’s news roundup covers industry concerns about projects needing audiences and metrics before receiving investment, Jinko Gotoh’s appointment as head of Women in Animation, Ron Clements’s memoir, Guillermo del Toro producing a Mexican animated feature, and the opening performance of Wildwood. It also notes discussion of pressures on concept artists, Joe Hisaishi’s new role with the LA Philharmonic, progress on Sofía Carrillo’s stop-motion feature Insectario, and other animation releases and history. Closing reflections consider illustrator Gustave Doré’s influence on early cinema and later filmmakers, and the value of animation that captures the distinctive, unsettled feeling of the 2020s.